Chapter Thirty-Six — Nora
I moved out of the secondary building room on a Saturday in late March.
Not out of the compound. Into the main building, into Wade's room, which was larger than the secondary building room and had two windows instead of one and a view that took in both the lot and the eastern approach and on clear days the foothills beyond the valley floor.
I stood in the doorway on Friday night after we'd talked about it finally, actually talked about it with words instead of the careful circling we'd been doing for two weeks, and I looked at the room and said: Two windows.
He said: You like light.
I said: Carlee told you that.
He said: Carlee confirmed it. I'd already noticed.
I looked at the room. The desk would go under the east window. The room was twice the size of the secondary building room and had a closet that was organized the way Wade organized everything, which was completely and without waste, everything where it was for a reason.
I said: You've been thinking about where my desk would go.
He said: The east window is better light for screen work. I said that without doing a lot of calculating.
I said: You did some calculating.
He said: Some.
I looked at him.
He said: I've been thinking about it for a while. You've been thinking about it for a while. It didn't seem useful to pretend otherwise.
I said: No. It didn't.
He said: So.
I said: So I'm moving in on Saturday.
He said: Okay.
I said: Okay.
On Saturday morning Carlee appeared with two boxes and opinions and we spent two hours arranging things.
By two the desk was under the east window and the books were on the shelf that Wade had cleared half of without being asked, and I stood in the middle of the room and looked at both windows and the view from each one and thought: this is right.
Wade was in the doorway.
I said: This is right.
He said: Yeah.
I said: The east window in the morning and the south window in the afternoon and the view of the foothills on clear days.
He said: The stars are better from here than the secondary building. The angle is cleaner.
I said: I know. I checked before I decided.
He said: Of course you did.
I said: You knew I would.
He said: Yes.
I looked at the room. Then at him.
He said: Welcome home. The actual home, this time.
I held his eyes. I said: I've been home since October. This is just the room catching up to the fact.
He said: Yeah. He came into the room. He looked at the desk position. Carlee was right about the chair angle.
I said: She usually is.
He said: Don't tell her that.
I said: I tell her that every time. She's insufferable about it and she's also always right.
He smiled. The full smile.
I crossed the room and put my hand on his face the way I had in the meeting room the first time, except this time it wasn't a first time, it was a continuation of something that had been building since that night and had been building correctly all the way through.
He put his hand over mine.
I said: This is the right room.
He said: Yeah. It is.
That evening at the table Kale made a note on his legal pad and I understood what the note was and let it be noted. After dinner we came back to the room.
The room was ours now and not a guest room and not a temporary arrangement and not a careful thing. It was just the room and we were in it and both of those facts were complete.
We kissed and everything that followed had the quality of things that have settled into themselves. Not the first-time urgency or the early-weeks intensity. Something steadier and more deliberate, the specific knowledge of each other that only time produced.
My shirt came off and his mouth went to my breasts and I held the back of his head and let the sensation move through me. The left side was more sensitive than the right and he knew that by now, had known it for months, and he went there and I made a sound that was not managed at all.
His mouth moved down and I spread my thighs and grabbed the headboard and said his name twice, the second time louder than the first. Thorough and patient, the way he did everything, staying there until I was pulling his hair and my hips were moving and the sound I made when I came was loud enough that someone probably heard it and I didn't care at all.
I pulled him into me and the fullness of it after wanting it made me exhale completely.
We found the rhythm we'd found over the weeks of this, his hips and mine, the specific pace that worked for both of us, my legs wrapped around him, his face at my throat.
I said harder when I wanted harder and he gave it to me and the sound of us in the room was the sound of two people who had stopped managing anything.
I came again before he did, my nails in his back, saying his name into his shoulder, and he came not long after and we stayed like that in the dark of the new room, neither of us moving.
The stars were visible through the window at the angle he'd promised.
I looked at them.
He said: Better angle.
I said: You were right.
He said: I usually am.
I said: Don't tell Carlee that.
He almost laughed. I felt it.
I lay against him and looked at the stars through the window that was now my window in the room that was now my room and I thought: this is the most accurate thing I have ever done.
Every piece of it.
All of it earned.